School district uses its beloved farm to bring students back to in-person learning
LANGLEY, Wash. — Over the course of an hour, the three sisters, their friend and their dad cleared out and deconstructed an entire bean tunnel — chicken wire, hog panel, T-posts, bamboo poles and all.
Under the watchful eyes of their teacher Jean Cravy and school farm manager Cary Peterson, the South Whidbey School District students dismantled the big structure one piece at a time, not long after a late October frost rendered the long, thin fortex bean pods swollen, inedible — but still compostable.
Their giggles filled the crisp air. After months of learning on a computer, they were happy to be working outside, together, on the district’s own halfacre farm.
As Washington’s school districts try to figure out how to break up the seemingly endless stretch of online learning while keeping students and communities safe from COVID-19, outdoor learning seems like a natural solution. But so far, few districts have successfully moved lessons outside.
While there are some pockets of success — South Whidbey, Colville, Whatcom County — other districts have gotten a slow start. In Seattle, School Board members approved an August plan to explore outdoor classes, but so far, none of the five proposals have launched.
The state superintendent’s office has certainly encouraged outdoor learning. “Getting kids outside for learning and teachers could result in less spread of the virus,” said Elizabeth Schmitz, who heads the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) Environmental and Sustainability Education Program. And research suggests learning in nature leads to gains in other academic subjects, as well as stress relief and even better vision.
Districts where agriculture already plays an important economic and cultural role have an advantage. South Whidbey is one of them: Six years ago, it turned an unused sports field into a school farm.
Starting up an outdoor learning program is hard, said Kathryn Kurtz, executive director of the Pacific Education Institute, a group that teaches educators how to teach outside. Many are intimidated by moving outdoors. “They won’t have as much control over the kids or aren’t sure what to do — it’s not a comfortable place for them,” she said. “Most people like the idea and understand the value ... but it takes time to implement.”
Still, districts — even those that don’t have their own farms — can learn from South Whidbey how to safely use the outdoors to keep students connected to their land, their learning, and their peers.
On the first Monday of November — just before Election Day — the farm felt a long way from the thrum of the outside world, with spiders’ silk gleaming in the sun atop the black irrigation tubing that had been used to water a corn circle.
Annie Wheat, 11, a sixth grader decked out in a pink jumper over a lavender shirt and purple leggings, plucked a blade of grass from the ground as she talked about what the garden has meant to her.
“When you’re on the computer, you’re just clicking boxes and watching videos. When you’re outside in any environmental place, you can really touch things. It’s like, it’s new stuff,” she said, her voice soaring, her friends listening intently. “The computer is just this old piece of thing.”
Through a wide smile, Cravy ribbed Annie for the critique: “Come on guys, I do try to make my assignments a little more than that.”
Annie twirled the grass around her finger, thumbing carefully at its tiny green ridges: “There are so many fibers in a single string of grass.”
The farm as a classroom
South Whidbey’s farm has had many uses. It feeds students some of their regular lunches. It’s part of a contextual curriculum that teaches students about the forest, the farm and the Salish Sea all around them.
A few other districts also use agriculture to educate. In Wahluke, a district on the Columbia River 61 miles east of Yakima, some life skills and special education students gather in a learning garden, aided by a heated greenhouse.
Students struggling in other areas come to life in the garden, sustainability coordinator Derek Hunsaker said, because they were already learning about it at home: many of their parents work in agriculture, and their multigenerational housing often involves garden work. In Wahluke last year, nearly 97% of students enrolled were Latino; less than 1% were Native American/Alaska Native.
For advice on how to tend the land, Wahluke educators turned to local Yakama Nation members. Their teaching: replant native plants, and take care of the river. The district is working on clearing a space of invasive species and replacing it with sage, rabbit brush and native grasses.
In South Whidbey, ever since the pandemic tore its way through Washington, the farm has taken on added importance. When schools first shut down, the district trained paraeducators — whose in-person jobs would have suddenly ceased to exist — to tend to the crops, which were included in the free food provided to families and food banks.
“Farmer Cary,” the school farm manager, made videos to keep the kids engaged. She, AmeriCorps volunteers and paraeducators made sure kids were able to pick up plant starts from the school. Administrators used the farm supporters to fundraise the cost of an outdoor classroom, a roofed structure without walls.
The farm is one tool the district is using in its effort to attract families who might not otherwise be there; many South Whidbey families are moving to private schools or home schooling, and others have moved away as home prices rise. When Susie Richards, South Whidbey Elementary School K-4’s principal, was a teacher in the district around 13 years ago, there were about 1,700 kids, she said. Now, there are 1,200. About 35% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch — not a high number, but big enough to create an economic divide, she said.
This school year, the district created the SWAP Program, a district-supported partnership that gives parents more agency in their children’s learning. In SWAP, teachers design lessons; parents take the lead on delivering them.
“In spite of COVID, we realized public school has to do a better job providing options for families,” Richards said.